Author: Lost Art Press

Editor’s note: As promised, Megan Fitzpatrick and I are writing a series of blog entries that explain how we have improved the construction process for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” during the last nine years (and several hundred chests).

When I built my first tool chests, I dovetailed the carcase and then immediately nailed on the bottom boards. My goal was to use the bottom boards to pull the case square (if it needed it) and then hold it square as I attached the skirts around the outside.

The downside to this approach is that the bottom gets in the way of clamping the lower skirt to the carcase. Once we changed the order of operations, it became much easier to get the lower skirt attached to the carcase with few (if any gaps). Here’s what we do now:

1. Dovetail the carcase, level the joints and plane off any machine marks.
2. Assemble the carcase, and work like heck to get the case square at both its top and bottom. You need to check for square at both openings.
3. Dovetail the skirts, as per the book’s instructions.
4. Nail temporary 3/4”-thick blocks to the bottom rim of the carcase. These represent the future location of the bottom boards.
5. Glue the lower skirt in place, making sure it is flush with the temporary blocks mentioned above.
6. When the glue has dried, remove the blocks and put in the bottom boards.

The original 45° skirt.

The new 30° skirt.

We’ve also changed the bevel we cut on the skirts. In the original book I planed a 45° bevel on all the skirts. That’s fine, but a steep bevel looks much nicer. Now we use an approximately 30° bevel and leave a flat at the top of the bevel that’s about 3/16”. That flat area allows us to miter a 3/16” bead moulding around the skirt (if the customer wants it).

Bottom Boards

For many years, we made our own bottom boards for the chests and used shiplap joints or (my preference) tongue-and-groove joints on their long edges. Now we purchase ready-made tongue-and-groove pine boards from the home center. It’s cheaper and saves time.

The material is sometimes sold as pine “carsiding” in 1×6 or 1×8 sizes. You can find it in different grades. I suspect they are No. 1 and No. 2 grades, but they aren’t always marked that way in the store. You’ll know when you find No. 2. It looks like No. 2 (yes, that’s a scatalogical joke).

Rot Strips

On the original chest, the rot strips were installed flush to the bottom edge of the lower skirt. Now we make the bottom boards flush to the bottom edge of the lower skirts. And the rot strips are proud of the skirts. This new arrangement prevents the skirts from getting wet and rotting. And the rot strips are now easier to replace when they get funky.

Finally, we now plane a 45° bevel on the long edges of the rot strips to make it easier to slide the finished chest across the shop floor.

— Christopher Schwarz

Editor’s note: As promised, Megan Fitzpatrick and I are writing a series of blog entries that explain how we have improved the construction process for “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” during the last nine years (and several hundred chests).

First, let’s get this out of the way: When I wrote “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” I didn’t think many people would build the damn thing. The chest was intended more as an idea. I love using floor chests, but I thought they would be a hard sell with readers. I was wrong.

When I started teaching classes on building the chest – the first class was in Germany before the book even came out – I struggled to get the students with a finished chest and lid after five days (never mind the interior tills and trays).

That forced me (and later Megan Fitzpatrick, who now teaches the tool chest classes) to rethink the process and see if we could make a chest in five days without using the “punishment whip” on the students. The first change I made (which saved a whole day of work) was to change the dovetails.

In the book, I used 13 dovetails at each corner – that’s 52 dovetails for the basic shell. And it is overkill. Nowadays we use seven dovetails at each corner. The chest is – in my opinion – just as strong. And most students assemble the shell by the end of the second day.

The second change was to eliminate the shallow rabbet I cut on the ends of the tail boards. The shallow rabbet assists in transferring the tail shape to the pinboards. In the book I show how to cut the rabbet on a table saw and with a rabbet plane.

When I started teaching this method, I found that most students had never used a rabbet plane. And so all their rabbets sloped down. Horribly. Chaos and gappy joints ensued.

Now I have the students temporarily tack a yardstick to the baseline of the tailboard (I call this the “Other Ruler Trick”). This helps everyone make the transfer with ease. No sloping rabbets. And no one locks themselves in the bathroom sobbing (not even me!).

— Christopher Schwarz